The present invention relates to a printed matter managing system for controlling such operations as copy of the printed matter, FAX transmission, scanning of the printed matter into the electronic file, and leave while carrying out the printed matter.
The information leakage is one of the serious risks in the business organization, which may adversely influence the management. Recently, valuable information owned by the organization, for example, personal information, financial information and product design information has been increasingly computerized. As a result, the information leaks through various routes including the off-line carriage-out through the mobile PC and the portable medium, and on-line carriage-out through e-mail. Among those routes, many cases of the information leakage by way of the printed matter have been reported.
The security management of the electronic file may be conducted in accordance with the policy set by the security manager using the file access control and encryption function. In the security management with respect to the printed matter, compliance with the policy set by the security manager is likely to be dependent on the user in most of the case. The printed matter obtained by printing the electronic file may be subjected to various operations, for example, copy by the copy machine (Multifunction Peripheral (MFP)), transmission to the public line via FAX, scanning to the electronic file, and physical carrying out of the printed matter. Generally the management of the aforementioned operations is left to the discretion of the user who has performed the printing. Entrustment of the management to the user has caused wrong transmission owing to the operation error of the user, and further the threat of the intended carrying out as the impulsive conduct. The security manager regards it difficult to confront the threat, and accordingly, the security management with respect to the printed matter independent from discretion of the user is required.
The description in the paragraph 0002 of JP-A No. 2007-293673 discloses limitation of unauthorized use of the printer and the user's printing operation upon installation of the electronic watermarking software on the PC to prevent the printing having no electronic watermarking applied. Specifically, various label information data such as the name of the creator (or the printer user), created date/time (printed date/time), and the copyright display are embedded into the document sheet as the electronic watermark for suppressing leakage of the printed matter.
The description in the paragraphs from 0033 to 0051 of JP-A No. 2007-94620 discloses the art for inserting the watermark into the printed matter forcedly by adding the watermarking information to the printed data by the watermarking print processor irrespective of the intention of the user who performs the printing. Specifically, such information which includes the defined string such as “confidential”, log-in ID, domain, date/time, machine name, and IP address as the watermark is embedded to suppress leakage of the printed matter which contains the confidential information.
The description in the paragraphs from 0014 to 0015 of JP-A No. 2003-241956 discloses the art for setting the existence of the watermarking in the folder to which the management level (label information) is assigned for managing the file in the document management system so as to send the watermarking data to the printer driver based on the label set to the folder which contains the file. The watermark data based on the label set in the folder are embedded to suppress the leakage.